AUSTRALIA
RBA maintains rates
The central bank kept interest rates steady at 3 percent yesterday, saying downside risks in the global economy appeared to have eased, while there were signs previous cuts were working. At its monthly meeting in Sydney, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) decided to keep its cash rate where it has been since December last year, a historic low last reached in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis. “The board’s view is that with inflation likely to be consistent with the target, and with growth likely to be a little below trend over the coming year, an accommodative stance of monetary policy is appropriate,” RBA Governor Glenn Stevens said.
AUTOMAKERS
Toyota to turn profit in EU
Japanese auto giant Toyota’s European business is set to turn a profit in the 2012-2013 financial year after a five-year hiatus, a senior official said on Monday at the Geneva International Motor Show. “It will be the first time since 2007 that Toyota will be profitable in Europe,” Didier Leroy, head of the group’s European operations, told reporters. Over the first nine months of Toyota’s financial year — which runs from April to the end of March — the group said it had earned 209 million euros (US$272 million). Leroy said Toyota’s goal was to sell a million vehicles in Europe in 2015.
ELECTRONICS
Panasonic selling building
Panasonic Corp is selling a building in Tokyo for about ￥50 billion (US$537 million) as the electronics maker tries to recover from losses of more than ￥1.3 trillion in the past two years. Japan’s No. 2 TV maker is selling the office building in Tokyo’s Shiodome ward, spokeswoman Megumi Kitagawa said by telephone. Sumitomo Mitsui Finance & Leasing Co will acquire 90 percent of the rights to the property, and Nippon Building Fund Inc said it would acquire the remaining 10 percent. The maker of Viera TVs is cutting jobs and reducing the number of business units after posting a ￥772 billion net loss in the year ended March last year.
AVIATION
Korean Air bids for CSA
Korean Air has placed an official bid for a 44 percent stake in the troubled Czech flagship carrier Czech Airlines (CSA), Czech media said on Monday. The firms seeks to acquire the minority stake for just a few million dollars, top-selling Czech broadsheet daily DNES said on its Web site. The Czech government set a deadline of this month for bids for the airline, which Ernst&Young auditors estimate to be worth 148 million koruna (US$7.5 million). Qatar Airways, which had previously expressed interest in the CSA stake, would not take part in the bidding, DNES said.
TIRES
Bridgestone closing factory
Japanese tire giant Bridgestone said on Tuesday it was closing a half-century-old factory in southern Italy next year due to slumping demand in Europe. The factory, which employs about 950 people, is one of eight Bridgestone plants in Europe, including sites in Spain, France, Poland and Hungary. It started operations in 1962. Bridgestone blamed the planned closure on “structural changes which have taken place over the last two years in the tire market, both in Europe and globally,” citing “increasing pressure” from lower-cost rivals in emerging markets and a worldwide drop in tire demand.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
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